


grail overfloweth

by punk_femme



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Mentions of Death, Yarne's Mentioned but not actually properly present, You ever just wonder how long the kids were Out There before you find them?, a lot of introspection on severas part
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 04:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17676116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punk_femme/pseuds/punk_femme
Summary: During the  time she spends apart from the children she stood side by side with as the world fell to pieces, Severa travels. she travels and she starts to see the life her mother died for, and tries not to think about the people she refuses to miss out loud.





	grail overfloweth

**Author's Note:**

> The name I attached to this sounds like it belongs to some 200k word plot driven fic that you bookmark and reread when you really wanna feel shit about characters :'D I'm not sure this is that exactly, given that it's hardly over 1,000 words. But I did pour a decent amount of my love for fe13's future kids and particularly Severa's character into it, so I hope you enjoy!

It was like a breath of fresh air, being in a world where life was not something coveted and hidden and covered in bloody dirt. It was like a bandaid ripped from flesh, a step too many in a set of stairs where your foot goes down, expecting solid ground and instead continues to fall. It caught Severa entirely off guard.

Severa had spent her childhood either wondering when her mother would come home again or hearing about the Ylisse of the past that her mother fought for. Hearing about the sway of grass in the soft breeze and the serenades of birds was one thing entirely, and living it was another thing in and of itself.

The self-indulgent part of Severa wanted to lie in that field until the sun set. The part of her that had survived up till this point told her she needed to ensure food and shelter. And money, she supposed. That wasn't anything she'd had to worry much about for a long time, given that most markets had been long gone in her future. She wondered how the others were doing.

Taking one last look over the lush fields around her, Severa set off.

\--- --- --- 

In another time, Severa looked out over ruin.

Perched on a wall in some forgotten Feroxi city with crumbling bricks and rotting framing, she polished her sword blade till it reflected her face. Bruised and tired, like the land around her. Lucina, at her side, had long since finished doing the same. This city, someone from a neighboring refuge had said, was bitten by the devil. Severa wasn't sure whether she understood too well or not at all what that meant.

She sighed.

Lucina looked sidelong, but didn't move to speak. She knew Severa was thinking what all of them were; Wondering if there was anything out there to save, if their plan could even work. She didn't blink when Severa's shoulder leaned to hers, and stayed there.

Tomorrow they go for Vert.

\--- --- --- 

Severa quickly realized she wasn't going to find the others any time soon unless by chance. She'd already heard rumours of a mysterious Marth leaving dead Risen and swooning villagers in his wake, but it was a fleeting presence now matter how quickly Severa moved to follow.

She hated the feeling of futility, so she spent her time taking in this world that her mothers had died to defend. Was she doomed to repeat that future? Would she simply fight and perish the same way? Did she really choose her own life, or was some cruel god making her out to be some sort of puppet?

Severa buried those thoughts deep in her heart to be guarded by defiant thorns and barbed words. She was a vain creature, she could admit to herself when she carefully tied her hair up and out of the way before a days work. But despite her _occasionally_ self-absorbed mind, it was not so bad to dirty her hands for the sake of others. She spent her days helping village women carry laundry or groceries, painting fences with children, fighting back small hordes of Risen and wolves.

She never stayed long enough to learn names. She would not admit it out loud, but some deep, quiet part of her heart knew she was simply afraid to see her own life mirrored in the eyes of a stranger.

War was ever on the horizon.

\--- --- --- 

Severa spent some time in the mountains.

Ylisse looked so small, so fragile, so painfully peaceful from up above. Watching the patchwork quilt of villages and forests calmed her and worried her simultaneously. The ponds cradled at the foot of Ylisse's mountain ranges were always beautiful.

When she was 6, Severa had visited Mount Vella with her family. Her mother told her of how it was rumoured that, on this very mountain range long ago, there had been a grand temple to a dragon. Her mama had mourned the loss of this dragons name to time, some benevolent deity who was said to have graced the lands with plentiful bounty and peace back in the days of the Hero-King. Severa had asked why her mama would care, when her kind wasn't even native to the continent and had no reason to care for their lives.

Her mama had told her that life was precious, that it was individuals who should decide their own fate, and that nothing is ever truly dead till it is forgotten.

Standing in the soft haze of rain under tawny leaves in the shadow of a mountain which had stood here for 2,000 years, Severa decided she understood her mama's wisdom now. For a moment, she could do nothing but feel the gentle pressure of raindrops on her cheeks and wonder if Lucina felt the same way.

\--- --- --- 

It was nearly a year before she heard the name Marth again.

She was in a village a couple weeks from the gates of Ylisse proper, asking a couple of farmers about a bandit group that had, recently, taken one of their men.

"If only that Marth lady were still here, huh?" One of them asks another, leaning against a shovel haphazardly. The other farmer was a deceptively doe-eyed girl with muscles to rival Kjelle and hair pulled back into two braided pigtails, a style Severa had always found cute, if childish. She scoffed, but didn't give any answer otherwise.

"Wait," Severa, however, was more than interesting in that particular topic. "'Marth lady'? She was here?" She doesn't stop long to deliberate what it could mean that Lucina had dropped the idea of pretending to be a man. She was more concerned on the where, when, and how.

Too focused on figuring out what to do with whatever info she was given, Severa nearly missed the actual answer to her question. It had been, as it turned out, about a week or so since "Marth" had passed through. That wasn't too bad, but with no leads on where she'd gone... Severa knew she had little hope of finding her with only that.

So, she put it out of her mind for now. She could try again later, because clearly no Fell Dragons loomed in the sky above now, and she knew for a fact she'd heard about a timid rabbit man spotted half a month's travel north of this village. If she was lucky, she could find her cowardly brother and they could search for Lucina together.

For now, she had the husband of a worried, pregnant baker to find.

\--- --- --- 

It was like a breath of fresh air, being back with her brother, the other children from future past, Lucina... It was the air after a storm, like sitting at her mother's feet with a comb pulled through her hair like fingers through warm water. It put Severa at ease.

She wouldn't admit that out loud of course. Some of these idiots would take it the wrong way, or call her foolish for letting her guard down even though they haven't saved the world yet. Her heart was too fragile, too recently scabbed over, to go putting it out there so soon. But she knew they were all happy to be together again.

\--- --- --- 

Severa lay sprawled in the grass, staring up at the sky above. Lucina sat beside her, slowly pouring through a book of Ylissean fairy tales. Cicada funeral hymns filled the air around them, grass rustled softly around them. Not too far away was the buzzing of fellow soldiers moving around camp. Every so often, Lucina would read aloud lines that struck her as particularly poignant and Severa would just be glad to listen to her voice.

Falchion lay in the flowers behind them, sharp blade gleaming in the light, unneeded in the moment but never forgotten. Severa breathed in the all-encompassing scent of pine as Lucina turned to the next page.  
"And there is rain, and music, and love..."


End file.
